Community Legal Services

Community Legal Services

New Report on the Rise of Corporate Landlords

A new report from the ACCE Institute (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment) exposes the growing harmful impacts of Wall Street’s growing single family rental industry. Since the financial crisis, tens of thousands of American families have found themselves, renting homes founded or financed by Wall Street investment funds. With overwhelming harmful outcomes on tenants, communities of color, and prospective homeowners – Wall Street landlords are fundamentally changing the landscape of urban America in the geographies where they are concentrated in. The report highlights the federal government’s explicit role in propping up the industry, the industries’ leaders’ direct connections to the Trump administration and the harms for tenants and communities including: denied opportunities for homeownership, dramatic rent increases, a spike in evictions, fee-gouging akin to those practiced in payday lending, and living conditions deemed so poor that some tenants have described it “life threatening.” Today, nine big Wall Street firms are collectively the absentee landlords of more than 200,000 single family homes in 13 states.